IIM-A hikes fee by hefty 11% across programmes

Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad announced a hefty 11% fee hike after a hiatus of two years.

Management education at the country’s top notch B-schools, the IIMs, is set to burn a bigger hole in the pocket with the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) taking the lead this time announcing a hefty 11% fee hike after a hiatus of two years. The IIM-A on Tuesday announced a hike in fees across all its programmes, raising the fee of its flagship programmes — PGP and PGP-FABM (Food and Agri Business Management) — from R16.6 lakh to R18.5 lakh. The fee of the PGPX course has also been increased to R24 lakh from R21.5 lakh for the batch starting April 2015.

Attributing the hike in the fees to inflation as well as rising administrative costs, Professor Ashish Nanda, director, IIMA, said, “There has been a steady rise in the expenses and when students who pass out of this institute go on to become leaders of corporates, it is only fair that they invest in their education. This should not be passed on to the taxpayers. However, even as the institute raises its fees, we emphasise our commitment to providing generous financial aid and working intensively with financial institutions to make educational loans easily available, so as to ensure that capable students continue to be able to join IIM-A, irrespective of their financial means,” said Nanda while addressing the media on Tuesday.

“For the PGP and PGP-FABM programmes, the tuition fee increase is 10%, whereas administrative costs (for hostel, facilities, academic support, etc) have increased at a higher pace owing to inflation. The cumulative fee increase for all three programmes of about 11.5% equates to about 3.7% annual increase over the three years. Even as IIM-A has been under increasing cost pressure, it has been committed to providing education to all capable students. IIM-A disbursed financial aid of R7.55 crore to 295 students in 2012-13 and R6.94 crore to 242 students in 2013-14, which, to our understanding, represents a significantly broader and deeper commitment than do the financial aid programmes of comparable institutions. IIM-A has also worked intensively with FIs and currently several banks are offering students loans covering 100% of their educational cost,” added Nanda.

In another major initiative to expand its global footprint, the institute is also introducing supernumerary seats for foreign nationals. IIM-A will offer seats over its present capacity to foreign students for the PGP course. “Our objective is to get quality foreign students to bring in diversity, and also to position the institute as a global learning destination for management students,” said Professor Ajay Pandey, dean programmes, IIM-A.